Clinton Foundation, Facebook, and Jed Foundation to Hold Town Hall at Pace University about Mental Health on Campuses

Town hall will highlight joint initiative to help colleges and universities promote emotional well-being and mental health

On April 1, the Clinton Foundation will join Facebook and the Jed Foundation for the first in a series of town hall-style discussions about mental health on college campuses, Mental Health and Wellness on Campus: A Town Hall Conversation Without Walls. With this Town Hall, the Clinton Foundation and the Jed Foundation will launch the new Clinton Health Matters and Jed Foundation Campus Program, which is designed to help colleges and universities promote emotional wellbeing and mental health programming, reduce substance abuse, and prevent suicide among 18-to-26 year-olds.

The Town Hall, to be held at Pace University in New York City and across digital platforms including Facebook, will encourage mental health experts to discuss serious issues with students, including the prevalence, challenges, stereotypes, and dangers of prescription drug misuse, self-harm, and suicide on campus. The Town Hall, moderated by Dr. Gail Saltz, psychiatrist and health correspondent for TheToday Show and featuring Mike Botticelli, Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; Marc Brackett, Ph.D., Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; Misha Kessler, the Jed Foundation's 2013 Student Voice of Mental Health Award recipient and college student; Dr. Richard Shadick, Director of the Pace University Counseling Center and Adjunct Professor of Psychology; and singer-songwriter Starshell. Participants will provide an open forum for students, professors, parents, and those in the health care industry to discuss mental health, and a place to address prescription drug misuse. The panel will also share resources to deal with these issues both on and offline.

Going to college is a milestone for many young adults—but a new environment can also bring new challenges. One out of every four young adults experiences an episode of depression before the age of 24, and nearly one-third of college students report an episode of feeling so sad or depressed in the past year that they have trouble functioning. Additionally, in the US, one person dies every 19 minutes from a drug overdose, and overdoses involving prescription painkillers now kill more Americans than those involving heroin and cocaine combined.

As part of the Clinton Health Matters and Jed Foundation Campus Program, Facebook and the Jed Foundation created a new resource, Help A Friend In Need – an online community guide to help people identify when a friend is in distress and address the risk of suicide on college campuses. Facebook also offers people the ability to take action when they see a friend or someone else post something that concerns them, whether it's reporting the content to Facebook or reaching out to a trusted friend or resource for help. The town hall will highlight how online resources like this one can be a game-changer in the mental health field.

WHAT: Mental Health and Wellness on Campus: A Town Hall Conversation Without Walls

WHEN: April 1, 2014, 3:00 PM EST

WHERE: Pace University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts

3 Spruce Street

New York, NY 10038

About the Clinton Foundation

The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation convenes businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity, create economic opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of climate change. Because of our work, 20,000 American schools are providing kids with healthy food choices in an effort to eradicate childhood obesity; 21,000 farmers in Malawi have improved their incomes by more than 500 percent; 248 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions are being reduced in cities worldwide; more than 5,000 people have been trained in marketable job skills in Colombia; 8.2 million people have access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS medications; $200 million in strategic investments have been made, impacting the health of 75 million people in the U.S.; and members of the Clinton Global Initiative have made nearly 2,800 Commitments to Action to improve more than 430 million lives around the world.

The Jed Foundation (www.jedfoundation.org) is a leading nonprofit working to protect the emotional health of teenagers and colleges students. Our programs are inspiring a national dialogue on mental health, encouraging millions of young people to speak up and take action, and changing the way academic institutions create healthier campus communities and prevent substance abuse and self-harm. These programs include: The Jed and Clinton Health Matters Campus Program, a groundbreaking self-assessment and feedback program that helps colleges create more comprehensive solutions to support their students; ULifeline, an online resource that helps students understand and address mental health conditions like depression and anxiety disorders; the Half of Us campaign, with MTV, which uses online and on-air programming to share stories and encourage help-seeking; the Love is Loudermovement that helps individuals, communities and schools build resiliency, create connectedness and promote acceptance; Transition Year, an online resource for parents aimed at helping to ensure a smooth, healthy transition into college life; and a portfolio of resources that helps campuses promote emotional health and protect at-risk students. Learn more at www.jedfoundation.org.